BED OCCUPANCY AT HOSPITAL

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27051, 28 May 1953, Page 3

BED OCCUPANCY AT HOSPITAL

Average Last Year Of

98 Per Cent. MANY PATIENTS WAITING FOR SURGERY “Last year, the average daily bed occupancy was 98 per cent. I hope that this will convince those, both medical and lay, that truth shines in the frequent plea of your casualty officer that no bed is available, and that those in need for nursing care only must often be turned away,” said the medical superintendent to the North Canterbury Hospital Board (Dr. T. Morton) in his annual report to the board yesterday. “It is hardly necessary to point to the effects of over-crowded wards, often with up to 10 extra stretchers, on patients, nurses, admitting staff, visiting doctors, and all those who bear the burden in hospital,” Dr. Morton said. “To have 98 per cent, occupancy of beds over a whole year means that 100 per cent, occupancy is often exceeded, and last year 623 patients were accommodated on one day in 567 beds and extra stretchers. Frustration, irritation, hurried, incomplete tasks, impatience with each other and with patients, are the natural outcome.

“We, will be accused of not providing more hospital beds. Even now the time is not yet ripe, for beds are useless without nursing staff, and nursing staff will not be sufficient until the desire seizes more young people for a profession of faith in self-dis-cipline, decency, and dedication.” The number of persons awaiting surgery was 1400. an increase of about 1000 in the last two years, Dr. Moiton said. It could not be said too often that their burden could be largely removed if the people of Christchurch made more effort to care for their aged and chronic sick. Every 20 beds occupied by patients requiring no more than home care meant that 550 fewer surgical patients could be admitted each year. Every patient who lingered in hospital for more than two months meant the loss of a bed for some six simple repair operation patients. “The number of patients in our hospital who have stayed more than two months always runs at between 80 and 110 a year,” Dr. Morton said. “Some of these are elderly people abandoned by their families, who refuse to take any further responsibility for them, when all they need is domestic nursing and tolerance of their foibles and sufferings by their own kin. No ordinary pen can depict the misery and degradation of rejection in these old people, and of their forced submision to the long, sustained discomfort and discipline of a hospital which should detain a patient on an average no more than two weeks, a bearable period for most” The “Lyttelton Times” in April. 1862, on the completion of the then Christchurch Hospital, had described it as “strange-looking” and “curiously incommodious inside,” Dr. Morton said. The descriotion applied too aptly today. Most of the reports tabled emphasised the cramped working space in all departments, as a result of increased work and staff.